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iMore show 496: Georgia's battery shame

First heard of iMore on another video podcast that Rene and Georgia where guest co-hosting at CES a couple of years back. Haven't missed a iMore Show since. I must say the trio is an awesome combination and enjoy listening every week. Although I do listen to the podcast when video not available (as in this one - Show 496), I do prefer watching the video shows (DON'T stop the video versions!) as Rene was looking feedback on this.

In the discussion about app quality I feel the show is sometimes too forgiving of Apple by presenting excuses for them to explain why the perception about Apple's app quality is what it is.

An app like iTunes has been a dumpster fire for long enough that there is no excuse for it to be where it's at regardless of the "technical debt". Apple has been one of if not the richest company in the world for quite some time now. In that context why does anyone continue to give them a pass on the quality issue?

With the resources available to them, they have now had plenty of time to ramp up Apple University, their training programs and to have hired the talent they need to address these problems. If fixing apps like iTunes is something they gave a **** about, it would have been fixed by now. They've had too many resources for too long not to have been able to hire and train the people they need to give it the attention it needs.

I'm frustrated with Apple these days primarily because I know they are capable of doing much better than they are when it comes to quality of their software. I suspect unless / until the poor quality of the apps starts to translate into slowing sales or lost revenue that Apple is not going to show the willingness to do right by the end users.

I agree about some of the iMore podcast host(s) frequently giving justifications for Apple's lack of QA when it comes to shipping software. OS X has become quite unreliable as the years go by, I sure do miss Snow Leopard, absolutely flawless, at least I still have it running on my old MBP. Speaking of iTunes, it is an INTEGRAL part of OS X and there should be no excuse for it not being tiptop, given that the Mac and "music is in Apple's DNA" just to quote Tim Cook. Apple needs to reprioritise and ship solid, reliable and WORKING software and not something half-baked.

I have to agree, as an Apple user dating back to the Apple IIc days to a new 27" 5k iMac and all sorts of mobile iOS devices I find is laughable and frankly absurd that anyone can excuse the state of Apple's core apps. They suck, Apple knows they suck, but they also know people will continue to buy their hardware because it does work. However you cannot live on hardware excuses to save them any longer. Outsource, hire talent or scale back the rollout of of updates.

Why do we get iOS 8, 9, 10, etc on a 12 month cycle, why do they need to push out a new iOS version every year, perhaps it should be every 2 years like the refreshed iOS devices themselves. This would allow for iOS 9.0 and 9.5 for the iPhone 6 and 6S then iOS 10 would be the iPhone 7 with 10.5 for 7S. This would allow for improvements and forgo the stupid tweaks they keep doing.

Add substance or this coming quarters drop in iPhone sales won't be the first ones.

Personally I am very happy with Apple apps and services, Apple Music, Apple Maps, Safari, mail, iMessage it all works great for me. Last night I struggled to add songs from my HD to Spotify, couldn't do it, with Apple Music it took five seconds, Spotify has been on market for 7 years and still there are things that don't work well. There aren't perfect devices or services or companies, nothing can be 100% reliable, why should I expect more from Apple than from others if Apple is 99% reliable and others fall far behind it, I am very happy of what I have here. Last year I was using for a while premium, expensive Samsung Galaxy device and that was terrible experience, in terms of software, reliability, consistency, efficiency, battery life. My advice to people with unrealistic expectations is to move for a while to different platform, it really opened my eyes and made me appreciate Apples work.

LOL. Ok, so.
How much do you pay for say an Apple desktop as opposed to an HP? You pay more you expect more. Surely that makes sense even to a fanboy?
Example. I buy a RAM upgrade from the Apple store for $1300, (yes that’s THIRTEEN HUNDRED), I buy teh same amount of RAM from OWC for $500. Which should I expect to last longer, or if they fail should I be equally disppointed in both even though I paid WAY over the odds for one of them?
Don’t worry, Timmy loves you.

You need to take the blinkers off and realise that at some point the law of diminishing returns becomes something you can’t ignore.

Sorry, you're wrong, compare premium device in terms of built quality and materials to other premium device. Look how much cost premium ultrabooks or laptops from Samsung, Asus, Microsoft. Check how much you pay for RAM upgrade for top shelf Surface Book, the same Surfce device, which brings so bad experience and so much trouble to customers, that Mictosoft had to make an official apology. Premium smartphones from other manufacturers are in the same price range as iPhone, of course you can have your own expectations, but the truth is that Apples ecosystem as a whole is the most reliable, user friendly, secure and stable of all.

No. You’re wrong. Listen very carefully as this is a fact;
The same quality of battery that goes in to a Rolls Royce goes into a Ford Focus. Guess which costs more. If you cannot, (more likely will not), see that I’m not sure what else to tell you. The cars also use the same alternator, have ECU parts all made by Bosch/Lucas etc.
The basic components that Apple buy in are marked up at ridiculous prices. Please tell me you’re not blind to that. It doesn’t matter if it’s ‘premium’.
You make me laugh, you’re probably one who shops at a particular store as you prefer their meat without actually knowing that it’s all from the same cut of meat from the same animal at the abattoir.

On the subject of memory, Dell for arguments sake will upgrade your 64GB of RAM to 128GB for about $1K. (This is 128GB of 2133MHz DDR4 RDIMM ECC, not 64GB in total of 1866MHZ DDR3 like Apple give you). I chose a premium Dell for my example a $6K Precision Tower 7910 Series too BTW.

Apple don’t make regular official apologies as they typically have been too arrogant. Seriously, can you not see that?
If I pay miniscule monies I don’t expect too much in return. If I pay a crap load I expect good service and longevity.

Of course it makes difference that MacBook or Surface are premium devices, the whole cost of engineering, production, design, manufacturing, can't be compared to cheap crap. In Apples case you also get free OS every year, this everything has its reflection in price of each component. I chose Surface Book example, because they charge the same money for RAM upgrade as Apple, but this product is also the same league as MacBook Pro. When we talk about desktops, you don't t have to pay Apple for more RAM, cause iMac 27 can be easily upgrade by user, so your Dell example has no point. Nobody here is defending Apple, Rene's or mine points are just rational and sane view of situation.

Also, most people don't factor in the life of the device (generally much longer with Apple gear), nor the re-sale of said device. Apple hardware will always sell for a higher price than other gear - even if it was on par quality wise when purchased new.

There is absolutely emotion involved in a lot of Apple purchases - but there are also many facts that make it a better purchase if the purchaser can afford it.

It's not like Apple is some little startup company that can barely fend for itself. They charge premiums for their devices because they give users a premium experience; Something that is simple solid powerful and reliable. I am not saying that the task they have ahead of them is easy. If it was easy then anyone could do it.

This gets to my core beef with the Apple of the last few years. You make a great point that aren't some little startup. Why didn't they work to significantly scale up their software design, development and QA teams years ago. The excuses given for why things may be deteriorating would have been perfectly reasonable in the late nineties, early aughts but don't hold water after years of being one of if not the richest company in the world. I wish the those who cover Apple would stop giving them a free pass and hold their feet to the fire for the companies failure to have scaled the organization up to go along with the increased product sets and give each of their offerings adequate attention.

I enjoyed the episode and especially the discussion of what issues Apple is having with its software. On iTunes, I feel that the app on the Mac has become more complicated to use and is no longer intuitive. On the iPhone, it's just really frustrating to use. I can't find songs, it's a pain to find songs that are on the phone without needing to go into settings and more. Though the look isn't bad, but because of the frustrations I have when using the app, I'm really getting turned off by it.

Second, you mentioned Siri and its functionality. Generally, Siri is OK, but isn't as helpful as Google's or Microsoft's equivalent. The big disappointment here is the lack of integration with IBM and Watson. With Apple's partnership with IBM, I'm expecting more Watson like functionality and I'm not seeing it. The other point I have for Siri, when I ask a question while driving, it would be great if it would read back the findings. Most of the time, Siri finds "this" for me and presents a list of web pages to read. Kind of hard driving.

Anyway, thought I would comment, and share my gratitude for the great job I think you all do. Looking forward to the next show.

Every time Rene doesn't disappoint the way he defends Apple. This time it was defending Apple against the article written by Walt, ATP podcast etc. Other than once in a while Rene saying Apple bad at services he just can't utter a single bad thing about Apple. We all love Apple and I own every new product Apple releases but the software experience is going down hill. Good they at least have opened by public betas now which will help but Apple it's time to step up on your software quality.

Thanks Georgia for being honest and speaking your mind out instead of having Apple filters like Rene.

My goal is never to defend Apple but to ask the really hard question: You think iTunes sucks, well so do I, but how can it be fixed? It's easy to say "fix it!", but fix it in what way and for who?

Dump Windows and iPod support? That'd get rid of huge amounts of technical debt, but what would Windows and iPod owners do?

Saying Apple's apps suck is perfectly acceptable for consumers. We have the right to complain about anything, any time. But that's personal and reflective of our own needs, preferences, and priorities. And those will be different for everyone.

As a writer and commentator, I think that's the far more interesting part — figuring out the solutions, the ramifications, and really understanding the problem. How does Apple handle the classic Microsoft problem of an aging platform with incredibly diverse userbase that needs to move forward?

My goal is only to explain as best as I possibly can, so if and when anyone wants to complain about anything, they can do it with as much information as possible.

iTunes has been a dumpster fire for at least half a decade now. It may be a really hard question about how to fix it. But the answer is not to do nothing because it is hard. Things are not getting better, they are getting worse.

Apple has had more resources than anyone else for a long time. If the way Apple does things is scalable, it's been plenty of time for them to add more engineering resources. They aren't a startup which doesn't have the resources to address problems. It seems like it's just not a priority - that software quality just isn't high up on their list of priorities. Honestly, am I wrong or unfair to have that perception and if I am why is it wrong or unfair?

As for ideas for how they could fix it - there doesn't seem to be any logical reason why iTunes for Windows and iTunes on OSX need to be on the same cadence. They could leave iTunes as it is for now on Windows and simplify and split iTunes into components on the Mac.